In the past, there have been many types of wheels and tires proposed for a wide variety of purposes. And, accordingly, it is suffice to state that the wheel art, in general, is a crowded one. Notwithstanding, there has been little development in the more specific field relating to wheels for wheelchairs. In fact, the wheels that are found on present day newly manufactured wheelchairs are essentially identical to wheelchair wheels manufactured over the past several decades. There has been some development in the field of specialty wheels for wheelchairs, particularly for use in various sporting activities. For instance, there are various wheelchair wheels which are particularly designed for sports such as wheelchair basketball and road racing (e.g., wheelchair marathons).
Others in the art have proposed oversized wheels for use on sand, grass and like terrain. While some of these all terrain type wheels have been found to be generally effective in traversing softer ground surfaces, when installed on a wheelchair, they usually enlarge the overall wheelchair size to the extent that it does not conform to the internationally recognized wheelchair dimensions which are often applied to the construction of wheelchair facilities such as ramps, access ways, lifts, and the like. For this reason, wheelchairs fitted with the various all terrain wheels known in the art are often unable to use public wheelchair facilities due to their enlarged size.